A Simple Custom Field Challenge - on duration

[greg]

I am trying to avoid an issue i am having where i set the standard day to 8
hour days (tools/Options/Calendars) and then provide an offshore caledar for
both specific tasks and resources. There are discrepecines in how project
calculates duration for those that have the 7 day a week/12 hour day
calendars assigned to them. I just want it to go, if 7 day/week task, count
from this start date to this finish date for the duration. instead if says
well the work is done on 1 day, but that 1 day is 1.5 standard days. So a 21
day task with a calendar and resource set at 7 days/week/12 hour shift ends
up being 35 days on the MS project duration column.

Is there a way i can calculate it myself, purely on the difference between
the start and finish days? like with a formula or something?

any help, most appreciated

 

[Dave]

I am trying to avoid an issue i am having where i set the standard day to 8
hour days (tools/Options/Calendars) and then provide an offshore caledar for
both specific tasks and resources. There are discrepecines in how project
calculates duration for those that have the 7 day a week/12 hour day
calendars assigned to them. I just want it to go, if 7 day/week task, count
from this start date to this finish date for the duration. instead if says
well the work is done on 1 day, but that 1 day is 1.5 standard days. So a 21
day task with a calendar and resource set at 7 days/week/12 hour shift ends
up being 35 days on the MS project duration column.

Is there a way i can calculate it myself, purely on the difference between
the start and finish days? like with a formula or something?

any help, most appreciated

This is governed by the "Hours per day" setting under
tools/options/calendar tab and that is a global setting.

To do what you want, you would have to add a customised column and
implement the logic you want through VBA.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Greg,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to see FAQ Item: 5. Default Working Hours

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://www.mvps.org/project/

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for Project Tutorials

 

[JulieS]

Hello Greg,

I'm not sure this will help, but here's a try. I think the possible
confusion is between work and how project defines duration. The
definition of a "day" as you note is set by default to 8 hours. But
differences in either task calendars or resource calendars will
certainly cause that duration field when compared to the start and
finish dates to appear odd.

For example:
Task A - no task calendar, a resource assigned with 40 hours of work.
Task begins on Monday (27 Aug) at 8:00 am and Finishes on Friday (31
Aug) at 5:00 pm. Duration = 5 days

Task B - task calendar applied with a 7 day per week/12 hour per day
working definition (8:00 am to 8:00 pm). One resource assigned with 40
hours of work. Task begins on Monday (27 Aug) at 8:00 am and finishes
Thursday (30 Aug) at 12:00 pm. Duration = 5 days.

If you want to just show the duration of the tasks as an 8 hour working
day with 7 working days per week, you can do a calculation in a custom
duration field.

I first defined a calendar with all 7 days as working days with 8 hours
per day 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. I called it "7Day".

Add a custom duration field (duration1) and use the formula below:

ProjDateDiff([Start],[Finish],"7Day")

Task A shows duration1 = 5 days
Task B shows duation1 = 3.5 days

If I increase the work on both tasks to 60 hours:

Task A Starts Monday (27 Aug) ends the following Wednesday (5 Sep) at
12:00 pm Duration = 7.5 days Duration1 = 9.5 days

Task B Starts Monday (27 Aug) and End Friday (31 Aug) at 8:00 pm.
Duration = 7.5 Days
Duration1 = 5 days

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

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